The present invention relates to skylights and, more particularly, to a skylight system with a tubular light conduit connecting to a roof skylight device to a ceiling skylight device.
Roof skylights are a means to provide daylight into a room with limited amounts of available daylight. Usually, such rooms have no windows or one window. Townhouses or row houses in particular are faced with light limitations, except for end units, they only receive sun light from two directions. As the earth rotates about the sun and depending on which direction a house faces, a room may receive a lot or a little sunlight. To overcome the limited available sunlight coming into a room, skylights were invented.
The early skylights had metal frames and glass panes with wire mesh embedded in the panes for safety purposes. The skylight was mounted on a roof over a shaft leading from the roof to a ceiling. Generally, the shaft was covered with wood or plaster board. The problem is that the sunlight reflects off the shaft, which has been painted, some of the light is absorbed, particularly when the angle of the sunlight is low. Another problem is when a skylight and shaft are added after a house is built, the alignment of a skylight opening and a ceiling opening may be off.
Recent developments of skylights, including the patented art, use modern materials to create skylights. With the use of modern plastics, sunlight at any angle cap be reflected through a skylight shaft into a room and skylights can be bent to align a skylight shaft with a skylight opening and a ceiling opening.
A patent of interest to the present invention is U.S. Pat. No. 5,502,935, issued to Demmer. In the Demmer disclosure, a skylight, shown in FIG. 1 has a skylight module 12 and a ceiling mounted fixture module 16 connected by a flexible, tubular, light conveyance module 20. The flexible, tubular light conveyance module 20 has an inner wall portion 54, an outer wall portion 56, and a middle portion on an insulation material 58. The inner wall portion 54 is white to facilitate light reflection. Both the inner and outer wall portion 54 and 56, respectively, are made of a durable, flexible vinyl material. The middle portion 58 insulation is an injected foam, fiberglass or any other known, flexible insulating material.
For the purposes of the present invention, Demmer provided the flexible, tubular light conveyance module with a series of pleats 52 to facilitate bending into alignment with the skylight module 12 and the ceiling mounted fixture module 16. Module 20 can be reinforced with a wire spiral.
Demmer also discusses the use of flexible, tubular light conveyance modules 20 of circular, rectangular or other shape in cross-sections.